The present invention relates to a connector device having mounted thereon an IC tag wirelessly transmitting information recorded on an IC chip via an antenna, an apparatus and a method for acquiring data of an electrical device connected to the connector device, and a control system for controlling the electrical device based on the data read from the IC tag.
In recent years, IC tags are used to confirm the attributes associated with an article or confirm the connection state between plural electrical devices. For example, there has been disclosed a technique for mounting an IC tag onto an electrical connector to read information within the connector or to detect the fitting state of the connector. For example, an example of this technique has been described in JP-A-2004-152543 (refer to claims, paragraph Nos. 0027 to 0029, and FIG. 5). In the technique described in this document, the male side of an electrical connector has mounted thereon a tag chip constituted of an IC chip and a chip antenna, and when the male and female connectors are coupled, a reader/writer connected to an antenna performs non-contact reading of information of the tag chip by use of the antenna disposed on a substrate having fixed thereon the female side of the connector to thereby confirm the connection state of the connector.
More specifically, according to this technique, when plural electrical devices are connected to each other by an IC tag mounting harness with an connector having mounted thereon an IC tag, a reader/writer reads the information stored in the IC tag mounted on the connector of the IC tag mounting harness to confirm whether or not the electrical devices are unfailingly connected to each other by the IC tag mounting harness.